Unit 3, Essay 3

Writing Our Relationships

A Contextual & Cultural Analysis (5-7 pages) Think about what true love and romance mean to you. Think about your parents, your schools, and your groups of friends over time. Think about the romantic relationships you have been exposed to throughout your life. How have others influenced your definition of romance and love? What are you supposed to feel when you are in love? Do you believe in the Hollywood/Disney version? Do you fight that version? Do you think romance itself is a silly notion? Does it have anything to do with love? How is romance defined differently in other cultures, including thousands of subcultures, within America? p. 328, Rereading Romance Writing as Revision Jillian Cantor and Leta McGaffey Sharp

Important Dates
11.14 In class, select Essay #3 primary text 11.17 2 page (minimum) Discovery Draft due for invention workshop (Bring 1 paper copy to class.) 11.19 4 page (minimum) Rough Draft due for analysis/peer response session (Bring 1 paper copy to class.) 11.21 Writing Workshop #3 (If you signed up for this workshop, bring 8 copies of your rough draft to class.) 11.24 Final draft of Essay #3 is due in class

Selected Texts for Essay #3

Please select one of the following texts to focus on in Essay #3; this will be your primary text. Because Essay #3 is a contextual analysis, you can use the remaining texts to support your thesis; these texts are your secondary texts. XLVII by Pablo Neruda, p.404 in WAR True Love by Wislawa Szymborska, pp. 408-409 in WAR So Much Water So Close to Home by Raymond Carver, pp. 277-290 in WAR First Ed by Terry Castle, pp. 343-347 in WAR Additionally, you might find the following texts helpful as you consider definitions of culture and themes related to love and romance: Rereading Romance by Jillian Cantor and Leta McGaffey Sharp, pp. 327-329 in WAR. Culture is Ordinary by Raymond Williams, PDF on D2L

Purpose and Audience

Essay #3 brings together the various threads weve been weaving with all semester: textual analysis, personal experience, and cultural analysis. So, to some extent, Essay #3 is similar to our previous essays: select one primary text, conduct several close readings of it, and compose an engaging, academic essay that examines how the text workshow its words, structure, style, tone, ideas, metaphors, or other textual strategies work together to elicit meaningful responses from readers. Essay #3 is different, however, in a very important way: Essay #3 invites you to explore a theme (love and relationships) as it is expressed in our Unit Three texts. In other words, Essay #3 asks you to:
L. Martin \ English 101 172, 193 \ Fall 2008 \ University of Arizona 1|P a g e

1. Select a primary text and analyze the textual strategies that the author is using to explore themes of love and relationships. 2. Use the remaining texts as secondary sources to develop and contextualize your analysis: For example, I might decide to focus my essay on Pablo Nerudas use of nature imagery in his poem, XLVII. I would then need to contextualize my analysis of Nerudas poem by looking at the other texts weve read during Unit Three: How is love portrayed in True Love by Wislawa Szymborska? How does this challenge, accommodate, or resist themes of love developed in Terry Castles First Ed? How does Nerudas use of nature imagery relate to the images of love presented in Raymond Carvers So Much Water So Close to Home? These are examples of the types of questions well ask as we develop our last essay of the semester. Finally, as you write Essay #3, consider the ways in which your personal experience with love is (1) shaped by a larger culture and (2) how culture and personal experience help you understand the way love works in the Unit Three texts. Here, I would like to briefly return to A Students Guide to First-Year Writing for a discussion of cultural analysis: While writing this essay, you will be looking for ways in which texts and culture are intricately connected, the ways that culture affects audiences readings of a text, and/or the value that is placed on cultural texts. You need to also consider whether the text youre analyzing challenges or accommodates dominant beliefswho is being empowered/disempowered and how? (192, emphasis added) Thus, as you compose Essay #3, keep these questions in mind: 1. How is love portrayed in the Unit Three texts? Are these texts accommodating, resisting, or challenging the beliefs of a dominant culture? 2. What are your beliefs about love? How are these beliefs accommodating, resisting, or challenging the beliefs of a dominant culture? As you compose your essay, please keep your readers in mind. For this assignment, your readersyour audienceincludes your classmates, yourself, and me (L. Martin).

Planning and Drafting

The composing process for Essay #3 will reflect the process weve been exploring all semester: invention, a series of rough drafts, peer response sessions, and writing workshops. This unit will ask youmore than everto collaborate with your classmates. This collaboration will include: a small research project, in-class discussions, and online Culture Blog discussions. These collaborative activities are meant to help you think deeply about the Unit Three texts and invent ideas that will evolve into analytical, imaginative, and thought-provoking essay topics. Your participation in these activities, therefore, is essentialwe need your help and insights! Last, but not leastwe will not have a conference week during Unit Three. However, we will have plenty of class time to conduct small group analyses and invention workshops. Also, you are always welcome to stop by my office hours or make an appointment to see me. We can chat about ideas, work on specific sections of your paper, talk about tricky grammatical problemsanything you need!

L. Martin \ English 101 172, 193 \ Fall 2008 \ University of Arizona

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